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Hundreds of Herpetic Monkeys Roam Florida

By on September 13, 2013 in News 11

Oh, Florida: Funny-Monkey-2You’re the state that keeps on giving, Anybody got a blowgun loaded with Valtrex handy?

Via Drudge Report:

Beware of the monkeys!

Hundreds of rare wild monkeys — some carrying herpes — are on the loose in Florida after a tour guide brought the spunky critters to the state long ago.

Wildlife officials said that three pairs of Rhesus monkeys were transported to a park near Ocala in the 1930s by tour operator Colonel Tooey after a “Tarzan” flick sparked a fascination with the creature.

But the breed has since boomed and more than 1,000 of the monkeys now live in the state, wildlife officials say.

Read on for tales of Herpes Monkeys Madness.

 

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Wormy Monkeys Have Healthy Digestive Tracts

By on November 17, 2012 in News 10

Picture: Pierre Gayet (CC)

Yet another study suggests that our anti-septic lifestyle may be causing some health problems while preventing others. It turns out that wormy monkeys (Anyone looking for a band name?) have healthier guts than their worm-free peers:

Via Scientific American:

In developed countries, we’ve mostly eliminated freeloaders like parasitic worms from our guts. But we also have the highest rates of inflammatory bowel disease, or IBD—when the immune system mistakenly attacks intestinal cells and friendly gut bacteria.

For years, docs suspected there might be a connection between IBD and our worm-free lifestyle. And a handful of studies have actually shown that infecting human patients with worms can reduce symptoms of the disease. But how?

Read more.

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Monkey Captured After Two Years Of Eluding Authorities In Urban Florida

By on October 28, 2012 in News 3

The monkey gave the forces of human society a good run for their money, remaining uncaught for two years. Over that time, it had a Facebook page and bit a random woman — in other words, it lived as a typical St. Petersburg resident. Via CBS Tampa:

The wild monkey that was on the lam in St. Petersburg for two years has finally been captured. Authorities say a wildlife official shot the monkey with a tranquilizer dart Wednesday.

The monkey eluded capture for years as it roamed neighborhoods in St. Petersburg. It even has a Facebook page and most recently bit a woman, causing trappers to ramp up their efforts to capture him.

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Woman Claims to Have Been Raised by Monkeys

By on October 23, 2012 in News 3

Picture: David M. Jensen (CC)

Via The Telegraph:

Yorkshire housewife Marina Chapman claims to have been raised by Capuchin monkeys. As you’ve undoubtedly already guessed, she’s got a book and movie deal to promote…

Marina Chapman learned to catch birds and rabbits with her bare hands after being abandoned in the jungle by kidnappers, it was reported.

The Tarzan-like episode was brought to an end when she was discovered by hunters but by her ordeal continued when she was sold to a brothel in the city of Cucuta, and groomed for prostitution.

She escaped and spent years on the streets, sometimes being arrested and kept in a cell, but was eventually taken in by a Colombian family to work as a maid in her mid-teens, and took the name of Marina Luz, according to the account given to a newspaper.

Later during her mid-twenties she travelled with a neighbouring family who went to stay in Bradford on business for six months – and stayed after she met John Chapman, then a 29-year-old bacteriologist, at a church meeting.

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Scientists Use Neural Prosthesis to Recover Monkeys’ Ability to Make Decisions

By on September 15, 2012 in News 2

Picture: Unknown (PD)

Yes, but can they make the monkey vote Republican?

Via ScienceDaily:

Researchers have taken a key step towards recovering specific brain functions in sufferers of brain disease and injuries by successfully restoring the decision-making processes in monkeys.

By placing a neural device onto the front part of the monkeys’ brains, the researchers, from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Centre, University of Kentucky and University of Southern California, were able to recover, and even improve, the monkeys’ ability to make decisions when their normal cognitive functioning was disrupted.

The study, which has been published today (Sept. 14) in IOP Publishing’s Journal of Neural Engineering, involved the use of a neural prosthesis, which consisted of an array of electrodes measuring the signals from neurons in the brain to calculate how the monkeys’ ability to perform a memory task could be restored.

In the delayed match-to-sample task an image was flashed onto a screen and, after a delay, the monkeys were prompted to select the same image on the screen from a sampling which included 1-7 other images.

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Yes, A Monkey Head Transplant Experiment Occurred in the 1960s

By on November 6, 2011 in News 6
This is one of those things that would be hard to say without the video evidence. As Cyriaque Lamar explains on io9.com:
We've been loving the Midnight Archive's series of macabre web shorts (previously: 1, 2). One of their more recent installments is a short documentary on the late Dr. Robert White, a neurosurgeon who successfully transplanted the head of one monkey onto the body of another ...
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Monkey Wedding Called Illegal By Indian Officials

By on July 13, 2011 in News 6
Monkey HorrorHumanity, look out. There is no way by causing this action, it will turn out well for all of humanity. Via the Huffington Post:
In the small village of Talwas, Rajasthan, Raju, a well-known cigarette smoking monkey, and his bride Chinki were married, according to Stuff. Raju had become a local celebrity after Ramesh Saini, a rickshaw driver, adopted him three years ago when he found the monkey unconscious. He's been a surrogate son to the childless Ramesh ever since. "I want to enjoy the feelings of a son's marriage through Raju's wedding." Ramesh told the publication. "We will welcome the bride in our house ... after the wedding with all rituals."
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How The Human Penis Lost Its Spines

By on March 10, 2011 in News 8
Photo: Snowyowls (CC)

Photo: Snowyowls (CC)

When I read that headline I thought I must have clicked on National Enquirer or something, but no, it’s Elizabeth Landau cranking out an SEO-friendly story for CNN:

You’ve read the headline, and it probably made you giggle. Go ahead. Get it out of your system. Then take a deep breath and consider how evolution affected a few specific body parts, and why.

Humans and chimpanzees share more than 97% of DNA, but there are some fairly obvious differences in appearance, behavior and intellect. Now, scientists are learning more than ever about what makes us uniquely human.

We know that humans have larger brains and, within the brain, a larger angular gyrus, a region associated with abstract concepts. Also, male chimpanzees have smaller penises than humans, and their penises have spines. Not like porcupine needles or anything, but small pointy projections on the surface that basically make the organ bumpy.

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Sneezing Monkey Species Discovered In Myanmar

By on October 27, 2010 in News 6

sneezing monkeyIt’s kind of hard to believe that a monkey that sneezes when it rains could have remained unknown until now, but apparently the Burmese snub-nosed monkey Rhinopithecus strykeri is new to scientists, if not hunters. BBC News reports:

A new species of monkey with unusual upturned nostrils has been discovered in north eastern Myanmar.

Scientists surveying in the area initially identified the so-called snub-nosed monkey from skin and skulls obtained from local hunters. A small population was found separated from the habitat of other species of snub-nosed monkeys by the Mekong and Salween rivers. The total population has been estimated at just 260-330 individuals.

A team of Burmese and international primatologists identified the new species of snub-nosed monkey during this year’s Myanmar Primate Conservation Program. Local hunters reported the presence of a monkey which did not match any description of species previously identified in the area.

After further investigation in the north eastern state of Kachin, experts found a small population of previously undiscovered black monkeys with white ear tufts and chin beards, prominent lips and wide upturned nostrils… Evidence from hunters also suggested that the monkeys were particularly easy to find in the rain.

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